The Things We Said When We Were Young
by LoyalElf
Summary: What a brilliant, miraculous beginning. What a tragic, wasteful end. We know the triumphant tale of the Golden Trio, but this? This is the story of the Trio that didn't make it to their reward. Fred, George, and Ciara. "Let's make a promise. No matter where we all get Sorted, we'll still be friends. And no matter what happens. EVER. Even if we defy ALL OF HOGWARTS HISTORY!"
1. Chapter 13

**Oh my gosh I've been gone fo r! I am so sorry, folks. I will try to be better now, but again...university. Ugh. I will TRY to have chapters up every fortnight, okay? Thank you so much everyone who has read and reviewed, and for my beloved ghost readers. I don't care if you don't have anything more to say than " :) " but, hey, review? :D I live off reviews! More reviews=more chapters and more frequent updates!**

**This story is slipping lower on my priority chart, though, seriously. So reviews are definitely the defining factor in me deciding whether or not to keep up with this.**

**3 **

**This chapter is sort of an interlude—a collection of random events from their Second Year. I love it, though, as it gives a lot of insight into the friends when they aren't agonizing over homework. Or certain Quidditch players... ;)**

The Things We Said When We Were Young~

Chapter 13: Breaking the Rules and other Ordinary Things

"This. Is. Really. Stupid."

"Such sarcasm," George sighed.

"Such doubt," Fred agreed.

"You ought to pull that stick out of your you-know-what if you wanna enjoy life, Cici darling."

Ciara glared at them, only half-serious. "And I need to _live_ if I wanna enjoy life. This is definitely life threatening."

"Aww, you sound like Percy." Fred pouted.

"Rude!"

Lee caused a small interruption to the argument by toppling flat on his face. Or at least, he would have, had George not sprung forward and caught him. Lee gave a shriek of anger and surprise and leapt to his feet, spitting his long hair out of his mouth. "Cici, get down from there! You'll fall, too!"

"I know, but I'm afraid to _move_," Cici moaned.

She was balancing precariously on top of a rickety ladder that looked as if it might crack into splinters any moment, arms extended towards the only solid thing near her—a bookshelf that nearly reached the very high ceiling.

The idea had been to get at this book that Fred and George had seen Percy snatch away from a third year, insisting that it was too dangerous and off-limits to younger students. It wasn't in the Restricted Section, but he had placed it on the top shelf, which intrigued his siblings. Had Percy read it? What did it say? How dangerous was dangerous—because dangerous is both Fred and George's middle name!

Lee had been perched a few rungs below Ciara when he fell—nearly ten feet. Ciara was standing at about twelve feet, meaning that her head was a few inches shy of seventeen feet off the ground, and about a foot and a half away from the book. Not close enough.

"We could boost the ladder—" George began, but the young witch above him shrieked, "NOT WITH ME ON IT! DON'T YOU DARE!"

George frowned. "Course not," he said easily. "Why would we do that? Though, what if we used Wingardium Leviosa on it?"

"NO!" Ciara screamed again.

"Shush," Fred hissed. "You'll attract a teacher! Or Madam Pince."

She gave him a furious glare and tilted ever so slightly. Her face went waxy white and she slammed a hand against the bookshelf.

"Are you-are you afraid of heights?"

George and Lee turned their faces to look at Cici too. She nodded. Lee groaned and George started telling her to come down, but she shook her head determinedly. "There are scarier things than being twenty feet off the ground, Georgie. Just give me…give me a mo'."

They did. They gave her five minutes, but no matter how she twisted and lunged, Ciara could not even get hold of the thick, black leather-bound book.

"There's something I can try," she said nervously. "But the last time I did it, everything in the room _attacked_ me."

"Is that how you got the bruises last month?" Lee sounded amused.

She flushed. "Yup." Then she sighed, stroking her ebony wand with one hand. "All right, boys, back away."

"We've got to hold the ladder!" George looked incredulously up at his friend. "And Lee's ready to catch you."

"Stand—back—now." Cici's voice brokered no argument. "I don't want you getting hurt just because I haven't mastered the spell."

"Just climb down," Fred decided. "Forget it. Too dangerous."

"Shut up!" Cici pointed her wand at him, sending a shower of sparks towards his face teasingly. "Let me try, Fred, George, Lee—please."

The three boys knew better than to test her when she was in this mood. Her dad had called it Gryffindor rubbing off on her, but Emily called it her lioness mood. It was either a really bad or a really fun or a really spectacular thing. It was written in gold in the prank war histories, usually helping the twins to pull off something really miraculous—like, shutting Snape in a cupboard and making sure he wasn't found for ages, and when he came out, he was completely covered in tinsel. Happy Christmas, that one.

Ciara leaned backwards a little on the ladder, arching her back so that her long hair swung over empty air, raised her wand, aimed it carefully at the book, and cried, "Accio book!"

The world seemed to blur. Books came flying off shelves from all directions, some open and windmilling pages all over the place, others closed and heavy and hard. Ciara gasped and jumped down, causing the boys to nearly have more of a heart attack than they already were. But she landed lightly, her wand tip glowing with some charm or other, and without another word the four friends went tearing out of the Library, leaving a storm of books behind them. They never did get a look at that one old volume that Percy so despised.

The third Quidditch match of the year was upon them—Ravenclaw vs. Hufflepuff. Excitement charged the air, especially when multiple Houses interacted. If Ravenclaw won by a margin of 50 points or more, the Quidditch cup would be between them and Slytherin. If Hufflepuff won, it would be down to _them_ and Slytherin.

The Gryffindors were going mad trying to figure out who to support. Most people landed on the side of the House they had the most friends in, meaning that there was a certain majority favoring Hufflepuff. Ciara was completely refusing to support one or the other.

Lee kept begging her to choose a side because it simply wasn't right to watch a match and not support one team or the other.

"Cici, you've gotta," he wheedled.

"Nope."

"Ci…."

"Not a chance. I've got friends in both Houses; don't ask me."

"I'm gonna ask you again. Choose one, pleeeeaaase."

"I will _hex_ you, Lee Jordan!"

George gave a low, "Oooooooooh." All seven of them—Angelina, Emily, Alicia, the twins, and Lee, even Ciara—were well aware that Cici had a strange gift for unusual magic. She could look at a rare or tricky spell in a book and use it five minutes later. Especially _mischievous_ magic, which frankly made her friends rather proud and pleased with her.

Ciara smirked and bowed over her History textbook again, languidly turning a page. The others turned back to their homework as well; Lee grumbled and sank lower in his seat, looking helplessly enraged. The fire in the corner of the Common Room crackled merrily, driving away the February chill. Snow gathered on the glittering window panes, and distant yelling told them that a few people at least were on break, sledding down towards the lake.

The peace was never meant to last.

Emily started screaming. The Irish girl never screamed, but apparently she had a lot of volume. Everyone in the room reacted at the same time. Her friends leapt to their feet instantly, looking over her wildly and running to her side. Many of the older students looked around or jumped up also, drawing wands. A few covered their ears, yelling, "What is going on?!" and the youngest kids started screaming simply because Emily was doing it.

Then Lee and George started shrieking and yelling too, and then Angelina and Ciara, and the noise spread until the majority of the room was either screaming or shouting to ask what was going on.

It turned out much later that Emily had screamed because some fourth-year had 'accidentally' set their fire-breathing salamander colony loose in the room and one had set her robes on fire. Normally this would have been considered annoying, loud, and entertaining, but the panic spread with the salamander population. Small rusty-colored creatures were soon setting chairs, robes, paper, hair—everything they could crawl to—on fire.

The fourth through seventh years were hard put to it. The fifth and fourth years were delegated with the task of herding the other students to their dormitories, and the others took charge of putting out the flames and catching the salamanders.

Nobody was hurt and no major homework was lost, but the Prefects were in fine form with their lectures and new rules. Percy nodded smugly along in the background as if he were a graduate and not a scrawny fourth year. The poor guy who had released his salamanders got a week's detention from Professor McGonagall when she found out and lost the House fifteen points.

All in all, it was a good day. Lots of good Gryffindorian reactions, George claimed.

All of the Professors had a story from the Trio's second year, it seemed. They had proof of this one day when they wound up hiding in the cupboard of the Teacher's Room.

Fred, George, and Ciara had just pulled off a fabulous prank involving a broomstick, a squirrel, and the Slytherin table. It had been quite glorious, but apparently a few of the Snakes had figured it out and tracked the trio down after lunch. It took all of Fred and George's knowledge of the castle and Ciara's spontaneous magic to get them away from the fourth and sixth years, and now Fred was crushed against the side of the cupboard with George half on top of him and half against the other side and Ciara pressed against both of them, desperately trying to hold the doors of the wooden cupboard shut. Her eyes were watering already—one of the twins was stepping on her right foot and a hand was pulling her hair, trapping it against the side of the cupboard.

All they had wanted to do was duck inside the room until the Slytherins had passed by, but then they had heard the sound of hurrying feet and Flitwick's and Magorian's voices. Magorian was the new Defense teacher, and he was pretty much a nonentity. He was like Binns—droning, dull, and oblivious to his students. Nobody knew what had happened to his predecessor. Ciara was of the opinion that Magorian was so boring that everyone was forgetting that DADA existed.

There was no more time to think about that, however. The door swung open and slammed again. Under the cover of the noise, Cici propped the cupboard door open just a slit.

All of the teachers—except Professor Dumbledore—were gathering in the center of the room, some of them pulling chairs from the table in the corner and some conjuring chairs from nowhere.

Professor Snape sat down with a look of fury on his sallow face, brushing some of his overlong hair out of his view. Ciara peered at him, very careful not to lean too far forward and bump the cabinet door and give them all away. She hadn't interacted with the Potions Master very often—in class he was condescending of her, as he was with all Gryffindors, though perhaps a little more so. It was no secret that Ciara was very bad at controlling her magic and instead let loose "accidental magic" that young children were so prone to, except for her perfect scores in DADA and above average marks in Charms.

One day he'd actually looked at her over his overlarge nose and sneered, "The art of Potions is precisely that—an art. Those with no self-control or ability to use what little brains they have been blessed with will find themselves failing by O.W.L. year."

Remembering this, Ciara frowned. But Professor Flitwick was speaking now and she wanted to listen.

"I simply don't know what to do with them, Minerva. They drive me up the wall but I know they don't mean harm—" His reedy voice was cut off sharply by small eruption of noises. Professor Sprout gave a shout of laughter that she attempted to muffle with one grubby, gloved hand; Professor Sinistra coughed lightly, eyebrows raised; Snape's lip curled and he began speaking across the others.

Ciara winced, guessing who was being discussed. George twitched sharply on the other side of Fred, his knee knocking painfully against hers.

"Forgive me, Filius, but if you—ah—watched them more closely, you would see they very clearly have no regard for anyone's wellbeing."

"I doubt that," Flitwick protested.

"No, those two are simply trouble-makers," Sprout laughed.

Snape, if possible, sneered still more. "I see blatant disregard for school rules, for authority figures, and for the lives and sanity of Professors and fellow students alike. All _three_ of them."

"Now, Severus," Professor McGonagall said sharply. "That's quite enough. I agree, Fred and George Weasley are hardly model students and have a distinct propensity for mischief, but to accuse them of carelessness and danger is out of bounds."

Flitwick nodded. Inside the cupboard, Fred attempted a small victory jig which he had to make an excited wiggle due to lack of room.

"Besides," Sinistra said airily, "everything they do is carefully calculated to draw out the most amount of laughter and mayhem. Careless is one thing they are not."

The twins nodded vigorously; Cici swatted them both sharply over the head.

"And including Miss Rothschild is this, Severus," Flitwick resumed, "is a tad assuming, I should think."

"The girl has no restraint," Snape drawled. "Her magic is unrefined and mediocre at best."

"She does extraordinarily well in my class," Magorian observed, making everyone jump. Ciara was impressed. She thought he only spoke in the classroom and then only as absolutely necessary.

The Potions Master's mouth tightened and Cici got the distinct impression he was holding back vicious comments on Magorian's teaching methods.

"And rather well in mine," Flitwick squeaked.

"And she can hold her own in mine," McGonagall said, which might have been a bit of a stretch, but Cici felt a pang of warmth. The raven-haired woman narrowed her eyes at Snape. "Ciara's magic is…unusual…but her dedication to her studies is above the mark. And yes, she is best friends with the two most rambunctious students to ever cross the threshold of this school—except, perhaps, for a foursome that you knew, Severus—" The three kids in the cupboard watched gleefully, only pausing to be briefly confused by the way Snape tensed at that last comment—"but she is the best chance we have at keeping them in line. She is compassionate of her fellow students, and let's face it, I think we all know we've been saved from a few pranks by her."

The professors shared a laugh; the twins' heads swiveled to stare at the girl in question with identical expressions of shock.

"True enough," Sprout admitted. "I know for a fact that one of the twins had roped Lee Jordan into setting a Blasting Burgeon Blossom in with my sixth years when I walked up to the castle to fetch my notes. I went running back, certain I was going to find a roomful of teenagers that wouldn't be able to hear for 48 hours, but no such thing. I found the Blossom tucked neatly where it ought to be. I figured out it was Ciara a few days later when I heard Lee, Fred, George, and Angelina complaining that the prank had failed. Awarded that girl 10 points for almost no reason!"

Cici flushed a bright red. She had wondered about those 10 points…well, Sprout had figured it out, then.

"I think she may have tried to talk them out of the prank they pulled on me last month," Professor Flitwick said with a chuckle. "If so, she failed miserably! The twins managed to turn every desk in my first year class into a holly bush, with the help of older students, I'm sure—"

Ciara smirked at the downcast expressions of the boys.

"—and when I had fixed them, I stood on my stool only to find it turn into a potted sunflower!...I dismissed the class."

There was a collective snicker around the circle of adults.

"I don't know about Ciara being involved," Sinistra began timidly, "but the twins apparently took the time to turn all the books on my shelf upside down, backwards, and in the reverse order as I have had them for eight years."

"All three of them managed to give me quite a day on Friday," Professor McGonagall admitted. Her lips twitched. "I'm still angry, but at the time it was just shocking—I couldn't choose between the urge to laugh and the desire to give them separate detentions for a whole semester. Of course, it was all three of them that caused the trouble, and all three of them that saved them from punishment. It was my evening class with them, and you know how the under-fourth-years are about the class right before dinner." A murmur of pointed laughter. "They had been remarkably obedient all class, which of course put me on edge." Another laugh. Cici smirked down at the twins with a very 'I told you so' look in her eyes. George stuck his tongue out at her, Fred smacked her shoulder.

"Fred and George had clearly made no improvements with their mass hovering charms—the lifting of many objects at once—" Flitwick buried his head in his hands, recalling the traumatic lessons he had endured trying to fix the disaster that was the Weasley twins' Mass Hovering Charm—"and had decided to put their failures to good use. When I looked down at the papers I was grading while the students were practicing changing doorknobs into buttons, there was an instant uproar. Everything not alive and not fastened down went shooting up into the air—books, bags, wands, papers, doorknobs, buttons, cloaks and hats, quills, ink, and even the things on my desk—a bag of gobstones I confiscated, a bundle of pins, the papers I'd been working on, and the set of knives my seventh year class had Transfigured for me the class before. You know the old drill—change a fork into a spoon into a chicken into a dog into a briefcase into a staff into a knife."

The second years in the cupboard gulped and looked at each other in horror. Fred mouthed, 'You have got to be joking,' but the other teachers were nodding along. "A fine set of knives, too, but oh! Thirty knives of all different shapes and sizes all tossed up into a hailstorm of debris? Including some wands? It was mayhem. Even the twins were caught off guard. I don't suppose they thought too hard about what would be caught up in their imperfect spells, because they started yelling for everyone to get down. Miss Rothschild, however, turned straight to me and yelled, 'Sorry, Professor!' I leapt up, and began trying to rectify the problem. It seemed as if the warped magic was harder to stop than a normal charm, however, and I wound up casting a shield charm just below the storm that covered the whole room like a low ceiling—trapping the debris above and us below. It was only a temporary remedy, but I was hoping to dismiss the class. When I turned around, however, what do I find? Ciara slamming the door behind Emily, the last student out, and just in time, too. One of the knives hadn't been caught by my shield charm and impaled itself in the door. Miss Rothschild yanked it out and leapt up onto a desk—which would have astonished me if the twins weren't already doing it, desperately trying to control their own spellwork! I began helping them, and both the Hover charm and the Shield charm disintegrated—and one of the books fell and hit me over the head."

The other teachers were listening incredulously. Ciara was pretty sure that Sprout was actually holding her breath in anticipation.

"I went down like a sack of potatoes," McGonagall lamented, "and nowhere near as useful as a teacher ought to be. But it seemed only a moment later I was sitting up, and who was bending over me but Fred, looking white as a sheet and vastly relieved. He had a pack of ice on my head—I imagine he must have snatched it from the ice chest my third years were operating on—and he helped me up and said, 'Ever so sorry, Professor. It wasn't meant to happen like that.'

'I'd imagine it wasn't,' I replied, 'seeing as my room is an utter disaster and you managed to injure one professor and goodness knows how many students.'

'The students are fine,' George told me. 'We checked. And your room…well…' He grinned, and I looked around in astonishment. Everything was perfect—the bags and their belongings lined up against the wall, the materials returned to their crates, the wands lined up on my desk next to the knives. Not a mess anywhere. 'How long was I on the floor?'

'About a minute,' Fred told me. 'Cici cleaned it up. On accident.'

I looked around, and there she was, looking utterly exhausted, poor thing. I raised my eyebrows at her and she just nodded. 'Yes,' she told me, 'I fixed it. Accidental magic.' And then what does she do, but leap to her feet, give me a hug and an apology, and go sprinting out the door with the twins on her tail!"

Flitwick, Sprout, Sinistra, and Madame Hooch burst into raucous laughter. Magorian smiled. Even Snape's lips turned upwards ever so slightly.

"A student—a second year, no less—managed to clean up a whole room on accident in less than a minute."

McGonagall nodded. At that moment the bell above the door rang merrily and the staff rose with a collective mutter and began clearing chairs away.

"I'll see you all after the evening meal," Sprout reminded them all. "It's Tuesday, remember, and we missed last week's Staff Meeting."

Less than a minute later, when all the teachers had gone off to begin setting up for their first classes after lunch, three teenagers fell out of the cupboard and broke into hysterical giggles.


	2. IMPORTANT

**READ!**

**So for some reason decided to take down this story—EVERY. SINGLE. CHAPTER. EXCEPT. 13.**

**While I figure out how that happened and how to make sure it NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN, I am going to **

_**REVAMP MY STORY. **_

**So.**

**When it comes back, make sure to at least give each chapter a quick **_**perusal**_** to see what's changed. I think it might come back a few chapters longer, actually, so take care!**

**Have a great week, everyone. I hope to have all the chapters rebooted by Tuesday. **


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